Fic recs, December 24th: Project Get! #11 · 9:07pm Dec 24th, 2020
You know who's cool? maskedferret. Also she knits, go check it out, she might be willing to part with a few. :3
VisualPony's newest reading is naturalbornderpy's Princess Celestia Has Stolen All Your Bedsheets! And then he and Midnight29 did Anon A Mous's A Visit from the Sisters, with Scribbler and Illya Leonov! (I don't think Pony & Wolf Productions have done a collab before! At least not since the channels were consolidated…)
I did another Mario. It's Crunchy Munchy Coins 2! BP2-WQ7-7XG is the code. If you want to play the first Crunchy Munchy Coins, it's JB0-P94-7MF.
So hey, time for another Project Get! because I seem able to do about one of these a year, and that's a real shame. :B As usual, I sorted my RIL by views, went to the end, and found ten completed stories that weren't sequels to anything I hadn't already read, one per author. I only went for stories written three or more months ago, because there were a lot from November. In fact, all but one of these was from 2020, which is kind of a shame. I guess people are reading new stuff less. :/ Anyway, go give these some love if they sound appealing to you! This could very well be my last review blog of the year!
H: 0 R: 4 C: 6 V: 0 N: 0
The Haphazard Hoodwink of Horsetown U.S.A by Protopony350
Genre: Crackfic
Saturday is missing, can Applejack stop it???
It feels like a long, long time since I read a good trollfic, and here's one, boy howdy. :D It's just a silly, fun romp with Proto's signature style of not giving two shits about anything. The comedy marches along at a breakneck pace, and nothing is taken seriously. How marvelous!
Troll Recommended
Working In (And Other Moments) by Nonchalant
Genre: Fluffy Shipping
Twilight and Rarity fit their romance into their worklife.
If this actually turns into an anthology, I'm gonna regret having read this, but for now? This was nice. It's fluff, yes, but there's actually a lot more to this than just shippy comfort food. Very nice RariTwi details.
Recommended for Shippers
Fallout Equestria: Safety by garatheauthor
Mature: Gore, Violence, Profanity
Genre: FoE Sidefic
Out on the fringes of the NCR, life is hard, even for its military.
This took second place in an FoE writing contest, it definitely should have more views. <.< Also, it features a character named Corporal Skull Fuck; people these days just don't appreciate what's given to them. So this is a great unfolding tragedy as ponies manning an underfunded outpost make a horrible discovery and try to figure out whether any of their number are caught up in it. If anything, this story shows that you can be grim and gritty without revelling in the grim grittiness. Shit just kind of sucks sometimes, you know? There are a lot of typos, most of them the sort that spellcheck wouldn't miss, but otherwise, it's nice to get back into some FoE after a while, and this was quite good. :)
Recommended
Brainbow Brash by WhatDidIJustRead
Genre: Random AU Comedy
Brainbow Brash leads the Elements of Farmony to do whatever it is they do.
The author needs more confidence. This story is shot through with warnings about how 'dumb' and 'bad' it is, and while it is extremely dumb, it is the right kind of dumb, the kind that falls neatly into being one of the funniest stories I've read all year. Seriously, everything just magically lines up in the right place and bizarre things that don't seem like they should be funny eventually have solid payoffs. Rarity fans may not want to apply (unless they can take a joke, ha!) but otherwise, I thought this was great. :D Highly Recommended for Wacky Laughters
Recommended
The Bank Job by Keywii_Cookies55
Genre: OC Fic
Ways to pass a boring afternoon: 1) Make a viral video. 2) Rob a bank.
I've got a lot of thoughts about this piece. For starters, it kind of doesn't work. I mean, it's very ambitious, but it also meanders a lot, and though some of the meandering is warranted, very frequently it means the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere. For example, there's a scene in the middle where one of our protagonists goes back to her place for whatever reason, and we learn that she lives with her overbearing mother because their bakery business closed down some unspecified amount of time ago. It's the bakery closing that's the really important part there, but it's just told to us right at the end, and doesn't seem important until much later. This is on top of some big editing issues in the first third or so, plus the fact that this is set in a world much like our own. I suppose, since the characters swear by Twilight, it's meant to be post season 9, but the end result feels more like the author wanted to vent about their own living situation, you know? Still, what absolves this by the end is the message: that things are bad, but we can take care of each other even if those in power won't, and desperate measures aren't called for. I honestly like how much the titular bank job is primarily a hypothetical, the Godot which never shows up. So… I'm not sure what drew me to this, but I can't say my time was fully wasted. This might be worth a look.
Recommended If You Don't Mind Earth-Like Settings
Belshazzar by Comma Typer
Genre: Sci-Fi Tragedy
With nightmares terrorizing Equestria, magic fading and the populace in uproar, Princess Luster Dawn is at her wits' end.
Can we all agree that Luster Dawn is basically just everyone's OC at this point? Especially when we're seven(ty?) thousand years in the future, and she the alicorn Princess of Equestria? It's really unfortunate, as there's apparently a lot of impactful things happening in this story, yet it's impossible to determine what any of them mean, since the situation has been formed completely whole-cloth. I spent most of this story in a daze, feeling like I'd missed the prequel, though the strangeness of the writing at least works for the first scene, since it's a dream. There are some typos, and the author apparently doesn't know that 'can' is the present of 'could', though that's not the only place where the tense pops out of joint. This does at least come to a concrete conclusion, but I really had no reaction by that point. A bunch of stuff just happened for some reason.
Recommended Only If You Like Stories Set Way in the Future
Sister by The Red Parade
Sequel to Desert Song
Genre: Slice of Dark
They were supposed to meet Octavia's sister, but she's late.
Wow, this is really a thing! The bulk of the story is Vinyl sitting in a booth, trying to write a song about rain, while Octavia frets over her sister's absence. The attempts at lyric composition are honestly hypnotizing, though I sort of wondered where it was going. And then, like the previous story, this turns on the final line, this time just two words. I really hope there's more coming. I mean, there's got to be one more part to this story, right? Right?
Recommended
Last Minute Season 10 Bingo Writing Contest Entry EDIT: This is Very Clearly Being Published a Week After the Contest Deadline. As Often is the Case, I Failed to Finish This in a Timely Manner. by Super Trampoline
Genre: Super Trampoline
Pinkie Pie and Big Macintosh decide to smoke crack.
Once again, it's Super Trampoline doing what he does best, or at least most. But if you can muscle through the authorial existential crises and slew of in-text fic recommendations, this is actually legitimately funny in a crackfic kind of way? No pun intended. But the story is so off the rails that I completely forgot it was a season 10 bingo thing until it was pointed out. Like, shoehorning in characters for no reason is precisely the kind of thing you'd expect from one of Trampoline's stories.
Troll Recommended
Confidence and Cannons: A Cloud-Haired Misadventure by SigmaSonicX
Genre: Crackshipping Comedy
Vapor Trail may have quit the Wonderbolts in haste.
I have to admit, it took until the titular cannon showed up for me to really get this piece. Starting with the ship, nothing about it seemed right. Rolling Thunder is written well enough to make things work, but I'm so used to Sky Stinger and Vapor Trail being a thing that I have a hard time accepting her being with anyone else. Like, it's just not conceivable. But then they try carrying out their cockamamie plan to get Vapor back into the Wonderbolts, and that's when I realized: this is madcap satire of some kind. It's absolutely butt-nutty, it doesn't make any sense, and that's why it's beautiful. Once I realized this wasn't meant to be a serious comedy, I was finally able to sit back and enjoy it, and what an enjoy I had. :D You just can't ask for something this bizarre to be this coherent (in other words, you'd expect it to be a trollfic, but it ain't!) I'm sure all those downvotes are from butthurt nerds who are mad Sky Stinger isn't with Vapor Trail, so just ignore that and read this!
Recommended
Nethe by KwirkyJ
Genre: Thriller
Twilight's friends start disappearing in the night. What does Luna know?
So this was different. Not quite a horror story, and maybe paced a little too fast, but it gives us an original monster with some very showlike motivations that ultimately lead to a happy ending. I don't have too much more to say, but it was tense despite its brevity, and certainly unique.
Recommended If You Like Darker Stories With Happy Endings
Darn, I'm just gonna miss 6900 reviews this year. :P Oh well. Murrah Crimbo.
You do jinglemiss? Cause I got a good feeling for my fic this time after my last!
5421551
Naw, I'm not doing Jinglemas this year. :B I've got two writing events from 2020 left to do, and I just queued up 55 stories for the first one! D:
But I haven't done Jinglemas reviews very often anyway, so it's nothing unusual for me to skip. :B I'll make sure to put your fic on my RIL at least!
ASDFthank you ><
5421559
Aw man :/
But don’t blame yay 🤪
Anyways, what do we have this—
Ah! The pain of no-to few views. Think I even just got one or two of these stories out of the ten likes trap 🤯
Oh sick thanks for the recc! Have a happy holidays! ^^
Glad you mostly enjoyed! Any highlights for you?
Gah, now I kinda feel bad for overselling how awful I thought my story was. I swear I'm not fishing for sympathy or anything. I just wrote it when the story just before it failed spectacularly after I had really put in some effort and made something I felt proud of. So, Brainbow Brash was kind of me saying "Alright, screw putting in effort, I just wanna make dumb ha-ha funny jokes." And reading it back now, it does still make me laugh, but it's also kind of a nonsensical kind of humor I figured most people wouldn't really find funny.
I'm happy that it's made some others laugh too, though. Heck, maybe I should do some more similar ridiculousness.
Thanks for the unexpected review! Happy Jinglemas!
oh also I would invite you the Quills and Sofas group where I end up producing most of these stories but I remember your other post about not liking many discord servers lolMerry Christmas, PP!
5421588
Pinkie's whisper to Verko cracked me the fuck up, I don't even know why. XD
5421624
That's the kind of story I write when I just want to entertain myself without ambition! :D
5421625
5421666
And also to you~
Wow, great list of fics! Hope you have a happy holidays!
I've read "Belshazzar" and had exactly the same reaction to it for the same reasons.
I still don't remember writing that one
I can't really say meandering is a detriment, life meanders a lot, and people just do stuff.
Anyway, genuine thanks for the review, never had one before, it's cool. Glad you sort of liked my fic. ^-^